No one else in the room seemed to notice when the clock stopped ticking. They were too busy arguing. The expedition leader jabbing his finger at weather charts, the geologist muttering about miscalculations, the photographer quietly deleting photos she'd never be able to explain to anyone. Outside, the mountain they had summited no longer existed. Not collapsed, not eroded. Simply gone, along with the valley below it, the river that fed it, and seventeen years of topographical surveys filed neatly in the university's archive. Clara sat at the edge of the group with the map folded in her lap. She'd been the one to open the compass that morning. The one who'd read the coordinates aloud with such easy confidence, leading them up a path that, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, had never existed. She thought about the families. The villages marked in faded ink that she now knew were no longer there. She thought about the school her team had photographed on day two, the children waving from the doorway. Whether they had simply never been, or whether they had gone somewhere else entirely, she couldn't say. No one could. The argument grew louder. Someone suggested calling the university. Someone else said they should call the government. The photographer said, very quietly, that she thought they should call no one, ever, and that suggestion settled over the room like snow. Clara unfolded the map one last time. There was the mountain, labeled in her own handwriting. There was the river, the school, the winding path. She folded it again and slid it under her chair. All things considered, losing the map was the least permanent consequence.